


Grease and Gears and Blood and Tears

by barelyaconcept, orphan_account



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Body Modification, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Science, Gen, M/M, crappy futurey science, for medical reasons, like there's some serious medical proxy stuff here that probably shouldn't be allowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 03:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4163820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelyaconcept/pseuds/barelyaconcept, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wonders what Rocket would think of this.  He wants to ask, but he can’t risk bringing him online too early.  He thinks Rocket might hate him for this, but he can’t make himself regret hours of toil that might bring him back for even a short time.  He wants to feel bad, knows that Rocket would probably hate being built into this, but he won’t let either of them give up, not now.  Not when they’d just found one another.</p><p>Not sure if "Body Modification" is the right tag, but with Rocket's history I wasn't really even sure how to note this thing.  And the whole beginning of this is really bleak for me and like... despair, okay.  Lots of it.  Happy ending, though?  :)<br/>Warning for a medical proxy making a decision they think the patient probably wouldn't like.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grease and Gears and Blood and Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone looking for an extension of my Sentinel AU... this is not that. Sorry. :(  
> This is sorta inspired by Ani DiFranco's "Trickle Down" because I cannot get it out of my head and sort-of influenced by _Total Recall: 2070_ because that show influences everything I do, basically.  
>  Like I wrote a poem and then it turned into a real thing and spellcheck is my only friend so if you see any errors, please let me know!
> 
> I may write another piece that actually addresses all of the problems coming along with this later, but I am aware that it kind of handwaves at Rocket's issues. I just couldn't put Peter through any more tonight and I didn't want to leave us both in that state.

The slick and grit of grease and dust fades away after a while. Some days, Peter looks down at his hands and can’t remember when his fingerprints weren’t cast in relief by the grime and oil ground into his skin.

He’ll do what he has to until they get back. They’ll be back.

Until then, he checks the cryo every twelve hours and pores over schematics before he makes a single adjustment. He wonders what Rocket would think of this. He wants to ask, but he can’t risk bringing him online too early. He thinks Rocket might hate him for this, but he can’t make himself regret hours of toil that might bring him back for even a short time. It'll work, though, if they can get it. It has to. He wants to feel bad, knows that Rocket would probably hate being built into this, but he won’t let either of them give up, not now. Not when they’d just found one another.

Each day he peers up through the spires and fog and smoke to look for the gleam of engines. He listens for the roar that is salvation. He finds it in his heart to hope because the cryo still reads full.

Eventually, he decides that this part is done. He’s overcome the tissues’ tendency to degenerate and the engineering is flawless but he can never test it too many times. He will not restore Rocket to a mind that hurts him more than his body did before, so he runs the simulations and triple-checks the readouts and while they run, he writes theories for pain reduction.

Every time he looks up and the sky is still smog and smoke and gray, he turns to the beacon and he checks it. He traces each wire, he monitors each transition, and he prays the planet’s magnetism hasn’t shifted. He prays his team can find them.

He thinks he’s missed days. Not that he’s slept through any; no, the timing of Rocket’s systems is far too sensitive for him to sleep longer than seven hours at a stretch and he has it all monitored closely. But some days he thinks he has forgotten to mark down a day’s passing. The connections here are fried and none of the clocks are right. They’d had to built and test the beacon from scratch to overcome the planet’s magnetic pulls and atmospheric interference. He knows that he’s lost days, but he thinks they must be back soon. Soon, this will all be over.

He gathers medical supplies from the abandoned hospitals is quick runs. He cannot and will not leave Rocket unprotected for long enough to gather all that he will need in one go. He finds anesthetics and sterilizers and nutritional supplements easily enough, but he has to shoot through a number of physical locks and disable even more digital protections to take a dermal regenerator. As he carries the regenerator through the still hallways, he realizes that spray sterilizers will do fine for the mech but that he will need to access one of the full sterilization suites in the hospital before he operates. He’s done fine with the warehouse’s refresher so far, but the grime won’t come off with a standard wash.

Weeks have passed when he wondered if they haven’t been able to locate the connection. They need a bio-droid interface for the central nervous system to mesh with the mechanics that will allow Rocket to function again. Those days, Peter rarely leaves the warehouse to check for the team, because he should be able to do this, build it. He thought about it. He knows Rocket could have done it. They don’t have he bio-generators, though, and Peter doesn’t think he’d be able to follow the instructions that exactly. Brain surgery conducted by an oaf with a how-to page.

Because that’s the thing, the mental thing. Peter’s pretty sure he could pull Rocket online right now, hook him into one of the plasteel terminals and the mech around his brain would allow him to speak to Peter through that, at least, but...

But Peter’s afraid.

As long as he has Rocket in cryo, Rocket can’t object to how they’re helping him. As long as he’s in cryo, Rocket can’t tell Peter that it was Rocket’s own damn fault for waltzing into a den of mechanical vipers without backup or an antidote for the neurotoxin. As long as he’s in cryo, Peter can pretend that keeping Rocket alive is what Rocket might want.

He knows Rocket wouldn’t give him time to explain. If Peter can implement the neural interface, maybe he can convince Rocket to give it a chance. Maybe.

The ship hadn’t enough power for the cryo unit and all the tech Peter had needed to build the mech for Rocket’s brain. It was a choice of going and then having to built the mech somewhere else after they found the interface or staying, using the planet’s long-forgotten technology to their advantage, and trusting their team to pull through. One option decreased the time required to finish this by more than half. There was really no decision to be made.

The days drag on, weak sunlight blurring into the radiation-glow of night, and Peter’s finally got a code to loosen the structure of the metal built into Rocket’s body so he can breathe without the ache. He presses his hand to the metal of the cryo unit and he’s glad he can’t see Rocket’s face in stasis even while he wishes he could hold his hand.

 

The hum takes Peter by surprise. At first, he assumes it must be another of the vipers, one of the sick, weak ones cast out of the pride. Those few are all that are left, but Peter has had to kill more than one since taking up his post as the lone conscious sentient on the planet. He’s moving toward the only remaining door -- he’d welded all the others shut near the beginning -- with his phaser drawn and his jaw set when he sees the gleam of thrusters.

Blue. Bright blue like a sky without clouds or smoke or fog. The blue that means their team is here. The blue that means they can fix this, fix _him_. Blue.

He wonders, why they’re clustered around him, realizes that voices other than his own sound very strange indeed. He gestures helplessly at the cryo unit and thinks dully that he must have asked about the interface, if they found it.

Of course they have, of course, because Rocket needed it, and he was depending on them. They’re clustered around him again, Gamora pressing him down to sit and Drax petting along is diesel-stained hair and Groot hovering anxiously as if the smog isn’t making him nauseous and he thinks that skin contact shouldn’t feel this _weird_ but that it’s a good weird and they need to finish what they started, _now._

They all look concerned when he pushes Drax and Gamora towards the nearest of the abandoned hospitals. He leaves Groot standing watch -- he’s not going to be assisting, sterile or not, so it doesn’t matter. Peter runs the sterilizing sequence twice before he gets out and he asks Gamora to make sure that he’s imagining the grit still in his hair and on his hands. She tells him his hair is soft and his hands are the kind of pale-new-pink he hasn’t seen since he’d burned himself welding sometime in the beginning.

 

He doesn’t remember much of the procedure, tries to focus on the movements instead of the sights and the feel and the memory of Rocket unmoving under his hands. He remembers the flash of positioning lasers and the gleam of the spiderweb-fine mechanics and the clean-fresh-fleshiness of the biological connections in the interface and the soft whirr of the dermal regenerator and the tinge of aerosol sterilizer. When it’s over, he isn’t sure if it’s been hours or moments, but he falls asleep to the hiss of cryo decompression.

 

He wakes slowly to the smells and sounds of the Milano. He thinks he must have forgotten how that felt, because it sounds and smells nothing like he remembers. It is somehow infinitely better. His nose is buried in something soft and warm and the smell is familiar, though it, too, is a smell he has been missing. When his brain comes online, he nearly jolts into a sitting position, but finds his shoulders pinned by vines along either side. He’s been asleep for nearly nine hours, he _knows_ it, but he looks up at Groot, who nods silently at his chest. His eyes flick down and the last day or so comes back with a rush of relief and worry and twitching whiskers, because Rocket is curled into his chest, warm and alive and real... and asleep, but blinking into wakefulness quickly enough.

With his team perched around him, Rocket sits up to look at Peter. Peter gives back as good as he gets and tries not to look like he’s worried Rocket’s different but he _is_ , of course he’s worried, but if there’s something wrong, if Rocket’s not the same, they’ll be fine, but he really doesn’t want Rocket to see any of that because all he should be doing is--

“Hey.” Rocket’s voice isn’t nearly as rough as Peter had expected, but then he looks around. “Hello, no, I’m talking to you this time, dumbass. I’ve talked to all those kids already. They haven’t been sleeping the day away,” Rocket says. 

It worked. Yes, it worked, and it even seems like it worked _well._

“I hear I have you to thank for maintaining my person and fixing up my brain. Hey, Peter. You alright in there?” Rocket looks concerned now, and Peter opens his mouth because that isn’t right. Rocket is the one they should be concerned over, not the other way around. 

“Yeah, I’m... Are you... How mad are you? About...?” and Peter can barely get that half-assed inquiry out so he really hopes Rocket gets it, or that someone else will translate, or something.

“About your playing mad scientist with my brain? Well. This is absolutely not an open invitation, alright, but I figure... I figure you helped me. You... You made me better, you didn’t make me hurt, right? So it kind of... balances out. I talked it through with these guys, they helped me understand. I have to say, I was a little miffed that you slept through my return from the dead, but... You are forgiven for playing with my brain, okay?” Rocket’s leaning into Peter where he’s propped up on his hands, but his face is tilted downward so that Peter can barely see his eyes through the fringe of fur. He looks... anxious, overall. Like he’s really really worried that maybe he’s trusting Peter with something that he shouldn’t and Peter _aches_ with how much he wants to deserve that trust. He slowly stretches one arm out, giving Rocket plenty of time to protest or scoot away, and scoops Rocket into his lap.

He glances around at the team and finds that they’ve made themselves scarce, leaving the common area completely vacant except for them.

“Rocket... I have so many things to... Thank you. And I’m sorry. But in some ways I’m also not and we probably need to talk about that because they’re kind of directly related to how much I love you, see. And I get it if you don’t want... if you don’t really trust me enough right now to let us try this whole thing again, because we just spent who-knows-how-long on some God-forsaken planet and you were pretty much dead and that’s going to take a while to get over and I know you probably hate the way I handled this, even if you do forgive me, and I’ve missed you so much. Just... I love you, ‘kay? And that’s why. Why I had to.” He tucks his nose between Rocket’s ears, avoiding that sharp gaze and breathes steadily. In. Out. It’ll be fine. Rocket is alive, the rest will work itself out.

“Peter.” Rocket nudges Peter’s face with his head. Peter looks up and meets his eyes. “You’re right, and we do need to talk about all that. But you say it was because you love me, and that... That makes me think that, as mad scientists go, I guess you’re my favorite, ‘cause I love you, too. And that’s why I can forgive you. Just... take it easy, and don’t make a habit of it, and I think we’ll be alright. I’d like to discuss where that leaves us, maybe take it pretty slow. For now, though, will you hold me? Just because I missed you, too, even though I wasn’t conscious?”

Peter lets out a chuckle that sounds remarkably like a sob and clutches Rocket closer.

He thinks of breathing in smoke and dust and talking to himself and to the still, cold body of the man he loves and of gears and neural pathways and sterile environments on destroyed worlds and all the little intricacies that keep people alive at any given moment and he holds Rocket close to his chest and is grateful for filtered air and forgiveness and warm fur.

 


End file.
